- published: 22 Jan 2016
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The Boston dialect is the dialect characteristic of English spoken in the city of Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts. The accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and areas of south-western Nova Scotia. Sociolinguists frequently group these regions with Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut to form the Eastern New England dialect region.
The best-known features of the Boston accent are non-rhoticity and broad A. It is most prominent in often traditionally Irish or Italian Boston neighborhoods and surrounding cities and towns. The Boston accent is mainly heard on the eastern part of Massachusetts, North Shore, South Shore, and the Greater Boston area.[citation needed]
All phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (see Help:IPA for English). For example:
The traditional Boston accent is non-rhotic; in other words, the phoneme /r/ does not appear in coda position (where in English phonotactics it must precede other consonants, see English_phonology#Coda), as in some types of British English; card therefore becomes [kaːd]. After high and mid-high vowels, the /r/ is replaced by [ə] or another neutral central vowel like [ɨ]: weird [wiɨd], square [skweə]. Similarly, unstressed [ɝ] ("er") is replaced by [ə], [ɐ], or [ɨ], as in color [kʌlə]. A well-known shibboleth is park the car in Harvard Yard, where the words park, Harvard and yard are pronounced [paːk], [haːvəd], and [jaːd] respectively. Note that the r in car would usually be pronounced in this case, because the following word begins with a vowel (see linking R below).
Boston (pronounced /ˈbɒstən/ or locally /ˈbɔstən/ ( listen)) is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper, covering only 48.43 square miles, had a population of 617,594 according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Boston is also the anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home to 4.5 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Greater Boston as a commuting region is home to 7.6 million people, making it the fifth-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States.
In 1630, Puritan colonists from England founded the city on the Shawmut Peninsula. During the late 18th century, Boston was the location of several major events during the American Revolution, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Several early battles of the American Revolution, such as the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston, occurred within the city and surrounding areas. Through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the peninsula. After American independence was attained Boston became a major shipping port and manufacturing center, and its rich history now helps attract many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone attracting over 20 million every year. The city was the site of several firsts, including America's first public school, Boston Latin School (1635), and the first subway system in the United States (1897).
Christopher Whitelaw "Chris" Pine (born August 26, 1980) is an American actor. Best known for his role as James T. Kirk in the 2009 film Star Trek, he has also appeared in films such as The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), Just My Luck (2006), Smokin' Aces (2007), Unstoppable (2010), and This Means War (2012).
Pine was born in Los Angeles, California. His father, Robert Pine, is an actor who appeared in CHiPs as Sergeant Joseph Getraer, and his mother, Gwynne Gilford, is a former actress who is now a practicing psychotherapist. He has an older sister, Katie. His maternal grandmother, Anne Gwynne (née Marguerite Gwynne Trice), was a Hollywood actress, and his maternal grandfather, Max M. Gilford (born Max Goldfarb), was an attorney who was elected president of the Hollywood Bar Association. Pine's ancestry includes Jewish (from his maternal grandfather), Welsh, and English. He has stated, "I definitely have a spiritual outlook... I am not a religious guy, I am probably agnostic".